A visual history of Dupont Street

Dupont is one of those streets that's been more important to Toronto's development than it's generally given credit for. Referred to as both Van Horne and Royce before the street was straightened and unified, its proximity to the CPR tracks made it an important industrial manufacturing corridor. Whether it be the Ford Model T factory and showroom at Christie, the Evening Telegram building across the street, the Hamilton Gear plant at Dovercourt, or the abandoned Mono Lino Typesetting building near Howland, Dupont was a place were stuff was made.

Some of that "stuff" had quite the range. In his 1998 essay about the street in Taddle Creek Magazine, Alfred Holden writes of the presence of Hamilton gears in the locks of the St. Lawrence Waterway, the cockpit of the Avro Arrow and within the moving roof of the SkyDome (now the Rogers Centre). "When you know all this, Dupont Street, so flat, long and gritty, rises to heights," he explains. "It is a place where visions and achievements far-reaching, even spectacular, began. In ways unseen, unrecorded, Dupont Street in Toronto was one of the places where the twentieth century, now at a close, was made."

Evidence of Dupont's industrial past is still easy to spot if you take the time to walk across the roughly six kilometres it stretches from Avenue Road in the east to Dundas/Annette in the west. Even if most of the factories have been replaced or repurposed, the street still appears more pragmatic than anything else. And yet, somehow, that makes it all the more intriguing. This is a place that's been steadily transforming from the beginning, and in its current state, one gets to see the hodgepodge of its history.

PHOTOS

Dovercourt just north of Dupont, 1904

Interior of the Ford Model T showroom at Christie and Dupont, 1910s

Dupont and Olser looking east, 1914

Dupont and Spadina, 1922

Dupont looking east of Bathurst, 1925

Dupont looking east toward Christie, 1926 (the photograph is mislabeled)

Royce (Dupont) and Dundas, 1923 (pre-underpass)

Royce (Dupont) and Dundas, 1929 (brand new underpass)

Davenport and Dupont, 1930

The Evening Telegram, 1940s (the site is now home to Loblaws)

Evening Telegram, 1940s (ominously with a Weston truck parked out front)

Sign of the Steer Restaurant at Dupont and Davenport, 1955

Hamilton Gear at Dupont and Dovercourt, 1957

Dupont and Davenport, 1957

Dupont and Perth, 1958

Dupont near Manning, 1960s (that's a skating rink in there — and now a private racquet club)

Dupont and Spadina, 1974

Contemporary Photos:

Various rail overpasses north of Dupont, 2009

The iconic Vesta Lunch

Dupont and Albany, 2010 (northwest corner)

Dupont and Christie, 2010

Historical photos from the Toronto Archives. Contemporary photographs by the author.